Do inner conditions create external events?

Destiny, Fate and Synchronicity Examples

“Next week is another day.”Peadar Clohessy. Irish Politician.

The psychologist Carl Jung believed that the inner state of a person can somehow affect the physical world and may explain why meaningful coincidences happen when a person is undergoing therapy or spiritual changes. Jung developed a theory that he called ‘Synchronicity’, in which he attempted to explain these strange events that are meaningfully but not causally connected.

In effect Jung claimed that coincidences don’t just happen but are a result of inner processes. Because of this, our dreams may sometimes find expression through odd events that happen to us in waking life. And just as dreams reflect the events in our life so too events in our lives may be reflections of our dreams!

My spiritual work brings me into contact with many people who are undergoing profound spiritual changes. These people may be bereaved, have suffered a life changing calamity or be seeking to develop their own spiritual and psychic powers. Often they speak about how circumstances have occurred that appear to lead them to me or to other spiritual teachers. It is as if we have an inner knowing that guides our feet for a while and ensures that we encounter the people we need to meet at that time. Similarly some people discover this when they meet their life partner. The liaison is often more then coincidence, there is a feeling of events conspiring for you to be together. Similarly we appear to be lead to meet important friends or experience things that life changing.

If you experience a strange synchronicity in relation to a dream it raises some interesting questions. Perhaps strange coincidences happen when our spiritual progress requires that our path be nudged, subconsciously, toward the right place or person for assistance. There is a sense of connectivity to something greater than ourselves and we may have a feeling of being drawn towards self-realisation. Similarly anti-synchronicity may help us to avoid paths that would be detrimental to our well-being- such as cancelling a journey because of a hunch and discovering later that an accident occurred.

Could it be that inner forces sometimes determine external events? Your own subjective experiences may have proved to you that this is the case. It is my belief that the inner world determines the things that we encounter in life and I hold to the maxim that ‘as we think so things become’. In part, events are determined by our ‘karma’ which is the accumulated merit or fault that we gather from our deeds but it is the inner conditions that I believe have the greatest influence on our destiny.

It may be the case that there is nothing random at all and all the good and bad fortune we encounter is just the unfolding of karma and thought. We blame luck for our troubles but if what I have explained holds true then we initiate everything that happens to us. We choose our lot and can be our own executioner or can use our free will to bring about a fortunate life. I believe that this is the purpose of psychic dreams. They arise in order to guide us to make the best choices and most importantly prompt us towards a path that encourages the cultivation of the inner life. Psychic dreams are most likely occur at times of momentous inner change as part of this process of spiritual integration.

For example, at a critical point in a consultation a beetle few into Jung’s room as his patient described a dream about a scarab. The scarab is an Egyptian symbol of rebirth, and Jung noted that the auspicious moment of the flying beetle entering the room coincided with the patient’s need to be freed from her excessive rationalism. It was as if events had conspired to help trigger the necessary inner process by challenging the patient’s rationality.

If we learn to link to our subconscious psychic streams, then sometimes fate may give us a helping hand to guide us towards self knowledge. Sometimes we might be amazed at the startling opportunities that synchronicity has brought our way.

This is a copyrighted extract from my book Psychic Dreaming by Craig Hamilton-Parker ( ISBN 1-4027-0474-7 Sterling Publishers 2004 )

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